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The Wilson Journal of Ornithology 124(2):370—374. 2012 
Female Song in the Common Yellowthroat 
Conor C. Taff," Katherine A. Littrell , 1 2 and Corey R. Freeman-Gallant 2 
ABSTRACT.—A mated female was observed sing¬ 
ing in a color-banded population of Common Yellow- 
throats (Geothlypis trichas) in New York State in 2011. 
This female continued to sing, often concurrently with 
her mate, for 1 week, at which time she completed 
nest construction and was not observed singing for the 
remainder of the season. Her song did not resemble anv 
normal Common Yellowthroat song or vocalization. No 
previous publications have described female song in this 
species; common explanations for female song in other 
species include abnormally high testosterone levels, 
development ol male-like characteristics with age, and 
increased territory defense demands at high densities. 
We found little support for any of these hypotheses, as 
our singing female was within the normal range for 
breeding density, testosterone, morphology, ornamen¬ 
tation. and several physiological parameters. Wc did not 
know the age of our female and could not discount old 
age as a cause of singing: however, other known-age, 
old females in the population were not observed 
1 Animal Behavior Graduate Group and Department of f 
lution and Ecology. University of Califomia-Davis, f 
Shields Avenue. Storer Hall. Davis. CA 95616. USA 
Department of Biology. Skidmore College, Sarai. 
Springs. NY 12866, USA. 
Corresponding author; e-mail: cctaff@ucdavis.edu 
singing. The potential explanations for singing serm 
inadequate in this case and the female may have been 
anomalous in some dimension that we did not measure, 
or a combination of factors may have contributed to the 
behavior. Alternatively, female song may be functional 
but only used in rarely observ ed social situations in this 
species. Received 24 October 2011. Accepted N 
January 2012. 
Female song is either rare or unreported in most 
species of temperate breeding birds despite the 
frequency of female song and male-female duets 
in tropical birds. Temperate wood-warblers gen¬ 
erally follow this pattern, as males of most species 
sing repeatedly throughout the breeding season m 
defend a territory and attract mates, while females 
usually do not sing (Spector 1992). However, 
atypical female singing has been observed on rare 
occasions in at least 11 temperate breeding wood- 
warbler species from six different genera (re¬ 
viewed in Spector 1992, Gilbert and Carroll 1999, 
Ogden et al. 2003). Several explanations for 
atypical female singing have been proposed, and 
it is possible that more than one process could act 
